


the heartbreak prince (it's you and me, that's my whole world.)

by gabrielgoodman



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, M/M, Post-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts, movie verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 06:49:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20652965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabrielgoodman/pseuds/gabrielgoodman
Summary: Richie Tozier has built his whole career on my girlfriend and your mom jokes, how could he be gay?Well, here’s fucking how.-at night, richie dreams of eddie.





	the heartbreak prince (it's you and me, that's my whole world.)

**Author's Note:**

> I watched it: chapter two three times in ten days. initially, I only wanted to see it because bill is in it but then I got sucked in and now, well, here we are. this is a character study of richie of sorts, post canon because I like to torture myself and feel unreasonable amounts of pain. I wrote this in a day, and this is mostly unedited because I just felt like working this muscle again, trying it out. it's been a while since I've written in english so apologies for any mistakes etc.
> 
> title: miss americana & the heartbreak prince - taylor swift

At night, Richie dreams of Eddie.

In his dreams, Eddie’s lips are wine stained, red, the color of blood in dim blue light, too much like his last memories of him but still vibrant enough and burning bright as if he’s still alive. In his dreams, Eddie is warm in his arms, untouched and unharmed, pure as fucking snow on a winter’s day and yet all Richie’s in a way that could not, for the life of his, be twisted into something he isn’t.

_ Richie Tozier has built his whole career on my girlfriend and your mom jokes, how could he be gay? _ Well, here’s fucking how. 

In his dreams, Eddie still wakes up and he’ll blink awake, like he did as a child and like he should’ve done for years right next to Richie, and his eyes won’t wanna open at first but he’d still smile because Richie would be right there with him, entangled in the sheets still unruly and twisted from the night before. Eddie would hate it, the mess, or maybe he would tolerate it for Richie’s sake and despite having just woken up and desperately being in need of a toothbrush, Richie would go again. He’d wanna make up for all the time they’ve lost and he’d vow to never forget Eddie ever again and tell him how fucking great he would look on the Emmy’s red carpet or just like this, naked in their bed, or in his stupid pajamas or — it really doesn’t matter. But in his dreams, Eddie is still breathing. 

In his dreams, he kisses Eddie. Soft and gentle and tender and lovely, a thing of such beauty it would make Bill weep if he could ever put it into words, and it would inspire Beverly for a decade to come. In his dreams, he kisses Eddie and they kiss like they argue, clashing teeth and grunts and too much tongue, and Richie would try to get the upper hand while Eddie would never let him, Eddie would never let him get on top and still, Richie would find a way to cup his chin and hold him in place enough so they can kiss, enough so they can melt into each other, enough because they both _ know;_ this is them. This has always been them, and that’s enough. It should be. In his dreams, it is.

He’d kiss like he’d tell a narratively driven joke up till the punchline, the pointe. He’d kiss so Eddie would never be able to forget why Richie Tozier is so goddamn familiar to him or wonder why he ever married Myra, or why they ever moved away from each other, and he’d kiss Eddie as if it was the last thing to do on this god forsaken bitch of an earth, and he’d kiss Eddie in ways he couldn’t say lest think about, in ways to never be discovered and forever lost in the dark. 

In his dreams, Richie kisses Eddie. 

In his dreams, Eddie is still alive.

*

Richie is not scared anymore. Fear is for people who still have things to be afraid of and he is quite sure he’s faced all that could make him quiver and made it out alive so really, he’s good on that front. He doesn’t have any dirty little secrets left to threaten him with so who the fuck cares; he isn’t afraid of the dark anymore and he curses clowns whenever he sees them within what appears to be a ten mile radius, not that his eyesight has ever been that good. You get the point.

After 40 years and 4 months there is nothing left to be afraid of. Richie Tozier is forever cured of that sickness that attracted all evil but at what cost, and why, and he would give it all back to change it, but today here he is, completely unafraid.

Instead, there is something else simmering beneath the surface. A quiet anger that makes his blood boil and himself prone to lash out, short-tempered and vile, downright mean, especially when whoever is at the receiving end of his wrath reminds him of — _ It _. Then, there is the resentment. The resentment for happiness and luck and love and everything in between, sounding stupid and simple but true to the core of the matter. Richie resents his memories and resents the present and resents his sickness and his eyesight and all the fucking gigs, and he resents the fact that they had to leave Eddie down there, buried under wood and rubble, a soul left to rot with a gaping hole in his chest that Richie would have died to fill. Could have died to fill.

Dying on his own seems useless now and besides, he has tour dates through the whole fucking states like he’s some - some - some kind of big shot or whatever, which he isn’t. He knows how to deliver a joke and that’s all, but maybe it is the elevated material because he writes it alone now, only calling up Bill every now and then, even though the guy could stick the landing of a punchline as well as finish a book. It’s just nice to have someone to talk to who understands, and he loves Ben and Beverly but they’re so goddamn happy and they have a dog and a boat – a boat, who’d have thought? – while he has nothing. 

Except.

He has all this anger inside of him that has no way to come out except through a laugh, a self-deprecating joke, material that he couldn’t even look at twice because his audience, those people that are his fans and pay to see him, they don’t have dead boyfriends. Almost boyfriends. Boys that got away and men that got killed by the spirit of evil itself, they don’t know that and yet. He remembers Eddie as funny, talking faster than anyone else he’s ever known but making him laugh harder too in between spitting out curses. Maybe it’s both. They don’t know Eddie but he does, fuck, he did. He _did_.

He knows how to tell a joke but he doesn’t know how to hold a eulogy. Nobody pays to see the clown cry.

*

_ Trashmouth: Welcome Home Loser! _premieres on Netflix on the 7th September 2017. 

The remainders of summer linger in the air like the taste of rotten fruit, sickeningly sweet and sticky, turning sour around the edges and a little fuzzy. It was a warm August, and now a very slow shift into fall and LA is still too fucking hot so Richie ditches his condo there and permanently moves back to the East Coast. 

The New York Times interviews him, and so does Vanity Fair. He’s kind of a big deal now, a really big deal, but that doesn’t stop him from screaming his throat raw at night and chugging bourbon as if it is his morning coffee; the make up artists keep commenting on his sharp cheekbones, his square jaw and the circles beneath his eyes that look like they are his very own sewer system. The nightmares only vanish for visions of sweat-slicked skin, dark brown hair and big, wide eyes looking up at him and he doesn’t know how he keeps doing this. Sweet murmurs in the night might be worse than any other part of his stupid, fucking trauma. Trauma. That’s what the doctors call it and Richie doesn’t know how to explain that that’s what you get when memories pile up and someone dies right in fucking front of you, impaled and – whatever. Trauma. So he sees a therapist, so what. Everyone does. He’s pretty sure Bev does. And Bill. Maybe Mike too though Mike has stayed much saner than anyone else he’s known, maybe because he didn’t forget like the rest of them.

Richie lays awake at night and wonders how he could ever forget.

Eddie is buried in Derry. Literally. There’s a stone and all to commemorate him at the fucking church and an empty coffin in the ground and there was a small notice in the local newspaper, and someone had to break it to Myra but Lord knows who did that. It wasn’t Richie. Richie doesn’t have any competition with the woman Eddie married because his own love crawls up his throat like a fucking spider and only did when he saw him again, he’s not staking a claim, or has any delusions, but he is coming to terms with the fact that it doesn’t diminish his own feelings. He’s making up for 27 years of pining after all and how to do this any better than by mixing it with a hefty cocktail of paralyzing, crippling, all-encompassing grief.

There‘s a lot of press happening, a profile written about him like he’s Frank fucking Sinatra or Bradley Cooper and he’s in talks for Emmy nominations a year before he‘ll even find out if he’s nominated. He hasn’t told anyone that the flashes of cameras make him uneasy and the noise of those events reminds him of enormous balloons popping or deadlights falling from the sky because no one would get it so he smiles for the paparazzi whenever he has to, in a suit that makes him look like his own dad and a pinched smile that is so wrong and tortured, it made Ben actually comment on it once. 

He wonders why he could not just forget, it would have spared him the heartache. 

But the people _ love _ him. He’s a gay comedian who crushed mainstream, hit it right out of the park so far they’re calling it a astronomical rise to stardom, or whatever, and he’s booked for every late night show ever apparently and maybe, after the rain there really always comes a rainbow. Ha ha, how funny is that? A _ rainbow._

Richie could fucking cry every second of the day but instead he faces the media and the fans and the internet because the rush of endorphins, adrenaline and anxiety alike keeps him on his toes and makes him function. When he’s at home, all he does is fall apart and clutch a pile of Eddie’s clothes close to his chest, pretending that they still smell like him and not the bag he got them out of or the corner of his closet that he’s shoved them into in an air of pretense he isn’t feeling the way he does.

It’s been a year, longer, and it doesn’t get any fucking easier, not for him at least, and the only reason why he hasn’t flung himself off a bridge yet is because out of sheer spite. 

There’s still a survivor left in Richie Tozier, however deep he’s buried, and in a voice that is remarkably reminiscent of Eddie’s, he tells him to stay alive. So he does.

He stays.

*

In his dreams, Eddie touches his hand and his face and his hair and he takes off his glasses and tells him how beautiful his eyes are. Beautiful and stupid, but also really beautiful and Richie gets what he means, doesn’t he? And Richie will nod yes, because he does, whatever it is, he would get the moon for Eddie, throw that damn lasso around it and pull it down.

In his dreams, they’re young again. 

In his dreams, they’re sitting in a car and Eddie is yelling at him to just put in the damn gear, and is Richie stupid? And Richie will yell back that he’s blind, as good as anyway, and there’s no way he’s not going to crash the damn car and in his dreams, he’s looking over at Eddie and his eyes get caught on Eddie’s lips, and then there’s only noise in his head like it is filled with static, and then he crashes the car.

In his dreams, Eddie kisses his cheeks like a ghost in the night, and tells him to stop holding on to this idea of him that has lived inside his mind for the past year and then some, and in his dreams Richie refuses to.

In his dreams, they have more time.

In his dreams, Richie will pull Eddie closer and whisper against his mouth before he will kiss him, or he will bury his head in the crook of Eddie’s neck, folding himself over to even reach, and he will squeeze him, hold him tightly and close to his chest so their breathing syncs and he can forget the thunder of his own heartbeat in his ears, the soundtrack to every single time he has ever laid eyes on Eddie. Eddie will begin to complain after a while and Richie will hide his grateful smile in Eddie’s hair, a little messy from running his hands through it and he will pretend not to cry because unlike Eddie, Richie lost him once and doesn’t plan on losing him again. The feeling lasts for as long as the night and vanishes as soon as morning comes, and he will wake up, having lost Eddie for good.

He doesn’t sleep well and time trickles by so slowly, but days turn to weeks and weeks turn to months and in no time another year has passed. 

Richie still dreams of Eddie’s lips on his own, the color crimson, the blood of vengeance and ultimately defeat, the picture of pain like an advertisement for a fucking horror movie. When the first request to see the casting directors of some TV show flies in, he shouldn’t be surprised, after all Richie Tozier has displayed incredible range and skill in pretending to be someone he isn’t for more than thirty years of his life. He doesn’t know if he’s so good at it these days when all he longs for is a sleep that hardly ever comes or dreams that are mundane, but he accepts regardless. He talks to Bill about it because Bill knows people in that part of their industry. 

Bill, in his soft voice and with the echo of a stutter, always asks him if he’s alright. It’s a good question because Richie has stopped defining himself like this. Is he alright? He has a house upstate and a beautiful studio apartment in Brooklyn like some hipster, and he makes more money than he can use, he supposes he could buy himself another Mustang, he’s rumored to host the Academy Awards and is about to tell that whoever came up with that can seriously go fuck themselves. 

Is he _ alright_? On some days he is, he hardly thinks of him. Other days he isn’t at all and he doesn’t lie to Bill. 

In his dreams, he’s happy.

He wins an Emmy. That’s not a dream though.

He’s alone on the red carpet. 

*

“..... _ This is honestly in-fucking-credible – uh, can I swear? I guess I just did. You know it. Uhm, anyway, this is an incredible honor and I wanna thank my friends and my family, and I wanna thank Eddie Kaspbrak whom I wrote this program for. Wherever you are, Ed’s, I – I love you. Yeah, don’t look at me like that asshole, _ you know it. _ Thank you and have a good night._”

*

It takes another year and another comedy special for Richie to go back to Eddie’s gravesite. In almost three years grass has grown over the ruins of Neibolt house in thick patches, withstanding the heat of Derry summers, and looking at it now, Richie can’t believe what is supposed to be beneath all of it. Down there. Or what used to be there for a million years until they defeated It and it all fell apart, taking Eddie and Richie’s favorite leather jacket he held onto while he died six feet below. Sometimes Richie wonders if there were two hearts crushed that day, in those sewers; one of a demonic clown and the other of a single man, and he is still looking for the pieces. They’re probably buried down there too like the rest of his sanity and peace of mind. 

He walks over the field, a meadow really, and it feels so different as the sun hits his face and reflects in his glasses. The last time he was here, they had to physically restrain him from running back in because he would have, he would have dug Eddie out of the earth with bare hands and if it would have taken him the rest of his life. Something in his hands itches to do just that right here and how but he remembers that it will be futile anyway. He would dig forever. 

Right. _ Trauma_. It does weird things to you, twists you around and chews you up and spits you out changed. Richie’s sure though that he’ll always love Eddie, will always want to dig him out of the ground, that he will grow older and his hair will get grayer and the wrinkles more, the lenses thicker, and he will still think of Eddie, eternally young in his dreams. Or forty 

Eddie would probably hate that he will always be forty to Richie. Or maybe he won’t.

Maybe Eddie is dead and he doesn’t have opinions on anything anymore, not the way Richie lives his fucking life anyway or how many cars he buys himself or how he dresses for the stage, or how he tells his jokes or how, god forbid, he remembers him and _ what _he remembers, and how he dreams about him every night in the hopes he will wake up and it is real. 

There aren’t any scary movies left, Richie thinks, as he turns his back to Neibolt to get into his car and drive to the church to lay some flowers on Eddie’s official grave. 

There are only sad movies and sad stories and sad fucking endings. Bill is right, endings are always the worst part. He should get the fuck out of this town and forget that all of this has ever happened and be a grown-up about this, he’s 43 years old and whenever he comes back here, he feels like he is thirteen and hopelessly in love with his friend. With Eddie. He is 43 years old and still in love with him but that’s not the point. He should have thrown the flowers away and just get over it like everyone else has, at least they’re all coping so much better with this than he is, with the loss — Stanley was a whole different thing, Eddie is so much worse and now he is weighing deaths, what kind of monster has he become? 

In his dreams, he crashes the car.

There is no other way out.

*

Richie doesn’t even know if Eddie likes roses but he leaves them anyway. There are sunflowers, undoubtedly Ben and Beverly, and a floral arrangement that is so carefully assembled it could only be Mike and Bill. There is a bouquet of pink tulips too that Richie does wisely not pay any attention to, instead he lays the white roses down as gently as he can and takes a moment to rest his head against the cold tombstone; he feels like he is coming down with a fever. 

He doesn’t cry. 

The next stop on his little tour is the last and it is only to make sure the _ R + E _ is still carved into the kissing bridge. He comes here every year to do it and if it gets deeper every time, then so be it. There is nothing in the world that could erase Eddie from his existence again, nothing in the world that could come between them again, nothing but regaining conscience in the morning and Richie has learned to cope with that, a daily reminder of how fucking unfit he is to have anything more than one night stands with guys that resemble a ghost too much if he’d bother or dare to look closer which he does not because he is not a fool. It is to fulfill some kind of sick desire inside of him even though he knows there is no one in the world like Eddie and there won’t ever be.

It’s just that he never got the chance to — he never got the chance to. That’s just it. It isn’t even moving on. Moving on is not what he does. 

He drives the eight hours back home in one, arriving well past midnight. His home is lonely and quiet and dark and his bed screams for him as if he is a long lost lover returning into the arms of his paramour, and what can he say, he has always had it for a bit of dramatics, a bit of production, so he doesn’t play coy. Sleep, after close to ten hours behind the wheel, seems like heaven to him and it has never felt easier to give in.

That night, in his dreams, Eddie doesn’t say a word.

Instead, he kisses the tears away in a horribly familiar manner, like they have built something untouchable in his dreams, like they are entirely different people, like Eddie is still alive.

In his dreams, Eddie swallows the tide.

And on the next morning, Richie doesn’t wonder why his face is damp.

**Author's Note:**

> cry with me on twitter @ richardrmadden


End file.
